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What's wrong with slippery slope arguments? Would you also dismiss concerns of global warming ("climate change") as a slippery slope argument? Or the Nazi bar argument? It's just arguing from basic causality. It shouldn't be taken less seriously to argue that if X happens, then Y, and then if Y, then Z. Especially when there doesn't seem to be a consistent limiting principle that would stop the chain of causality from continuing to Z. You are free to disagree on the specifics on X, Y and Z, but just dismissing arguments of this form out of hand doesn't seem conducive to discussion.
Proposing a plausible sounding chain of causation is cheap and easy and only persuasive to people who already share your beliefs about how complex social dynamics will inevitably play out. I will note that when the climate people propose "more CO2 -> higher average global temperature -> economic/environmental/humanitarian catastrophe" they then go on to spend tremendous resources measuring the global average temperature and developing cyclical climate models and attempt to show that the increased number of extreme weather events is related to the rising average global temperature.
In this thread anti-MAID people are proposing "terminal cancer patients and people with degenerative neurological conditions using MAID -> healthy old people using MAID because of new social norms about not being a burden -> depressed 25 year olds killing themselves" (x->y->z). I think that's a plausible chain of events, but I don't think it's the only possible way for a complex social change to play out, so I am asking for evidence that y and z are happening at increased rates relative to the past. No one in this thread has bothered to answer me with numbers. I've gotten "x->y->z is plausible because a->b->c in the past" or "isn't the general form x->y->z valid" or "x is increasing" but no one is digging into the stats to tell me what's going on with y and z.
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